Natasha Lomas
Senior Reporter
The Latest from Natasha Lomas
UK to avoid fixed rules for AI – in favor of ‘context-specific guidance’
The U.K. isn’t going to be setting hard rules for AI any time soon. Today, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a white paper setting out the government’s
Google gets antitrust attention in Spain over news licensing
Google can add another antitrust investigation to its stack. This one has been opened by Spain’s competition authority, the CNMC, which said today it’s concerned about possible anti-compet
Germany probes Microsoft’s market power
Microsoft is the latest tech giant to be caught in the cross-hairs of Germany’s antitrust authority. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO), aka the Bundeskartellamt, has announced it’s opened a
Twitter is dying
It’s five months since Elon Musk overpaid for a relatively small microblogging platform called Twitter. The platform had punched above its weight in pure user numbers thanks to an unrivaled abil
French parliament votes for biometric surveillance at Paris Olympics
European Union lawmakers are on track to ban the use of remote biometric surveillance for general law enforcement purposes. However that hasn’t stopped parliamentarians in France voting to deplo
UK narrows antitrust probe of Microsoft-Activision
The UK's antitrust watchdog has narrowed its probe of Microsoft's $68.7 billion bid for video game giant, Activision Blizzard, the regulator said today.
Metaverse is just VR, admits Meta, as it lobbies against ‘arbitrary’ network fee
Meta, the self-styled “metaverse company” formerly known as Facebook, has taken on a novel role de-hyping the virtual world technology its founder bet the farm on just a few short years ag
Lun is in a mad rush to help heat-pump installers decarbonize homes
Lun, a climate tech startup out of Denmark, is on a mission to help homes decarbonize fast — starting with heating systems and swapping out boilers for electric heat pumps. What are heat pumps?
Europe tools up for the repairable future
The European Commission has laid out another piece of its Circular Economy Action Plan today — adopting a proposal to set common EU rules which are intended to make it easier for consumers to ge
TikTok ‘French Scar’ challenge triggers safety probe in Italy
TikTok has another problem to add to its growing pile: Italy’s consumer watchdog has opened an investigation over user safety concerns — stepping in after a so-called “French scar
Facebook political microtargeting at center of GDPR complaints in Germany
European privacy rights group noyb is building a case against every political party in Germany, alleging unlawful microtargeting of voters.
Glaze protects art from prying AIs
The asymmetry in time and effort it takes human artists to produce original art vs the speed generative AI models can now get the task done is one of the reasons why Glaze, an academic research projec
Use of Meta tracking tools found to breach EU rules on data transfers
Austria’s data protection authority has found that use of Meta’s tracking technologies violated EU data protection law as personal data was transferred to the US where the information was
Facebook’s behavioral ads lacked legal basis, Dutch court rules
In the latest blow to Meta’s consentless behavioral ad-targeting business in Europe, a Dutch court has found the social media giant’s Irish subsidiary did not have a lawful basis to proces
UK gov’t asks National Cyber Security Centre to review TikTok
The U.K. government has asked the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to review TikTok in a move that could prefigure a ban on the app on government devices. Speaking to Sky News, security minister
Secure messaging apps line up to warn UK’s Online Safety Bill risks web security
Secure messaging apps are lining up to oppose measures in the U.K. government’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) they argue will do the opposite of promoting online safety by undermining the robust encr
UK takes another bite at post-Brexit data protection reform — with ‘new GDPR’
Turns out the UK government, under current prime minister Rishi Sunak, is not replacing the GDPR, as Michelle Donelan, his secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, implied last Octo
DuckDuckGo dabbles with AI search
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has followed Microsoft and Google to become the latest veteran search player to dip its beak in the generative AI trend — announcing the launch today in
Twitter Blue’s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice
Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahea
WhatsApp agrees to clean up its user messaging in the EU
It’s taken rather longer than a month for Meta-owned WhatsApp to commit to address complaints swirling around how it imposes terms of service on users but the European Commission has just announ